


Filling In The Blanks

by Cinder_the_Great



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blue Paladin Keith (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), Multi, klance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 04:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13803069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinder_the_Great/pseuds/Cinder_the_Great
Summary: After a brief dive into the past where we watch Keith grow up and see what kinds of his past experiences have shaped him into who he is today, we arrive at the Garrison, shortly after Keith was kicked out. Him and Pidge have decided to work together to try and find out what actually happened during the Kerberos disaster, but Keith has something he isn't telling Pidge.When Pidge and ex-student Keith disappear from The Garrison one night, Lance and Hunk find their notes on a strange finding in a cave off-campus. Will they decide to peruse what the missing students were looking for, or will they pretend they never found anything?What will happen when Keith reunites with his old classmates? Will he ever tell Pidge and the others about his secret heratige? What happens when they finally find out that Shiro isn't dead but a prisoner of the Galra- and they need Allura, Coran, and Allia's help to set him free?---This fic mostly sticks to what happens in cannon in the first episode or so of the show. However, it will evolve from there.This fic is also probably not going to be very romance-centered, but there is certainly going to be some.More tags/relationships to come as the story continues.





	Filling In The Blanks

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy this new work I started. This was originally going to be a rewrite of another, way-too-long work in progress I have, but it turned into something entirely new (ha). I really liked where this ended up, so I decided to keep working on it.
> 
> Please keep in mind that this chapter is written in Keith's point-of-view.

Keith

When I was just born, according to my father, my mother looked into my eyes and cried. He held her as she cried for all the steps she wouldn’t get to see me take, all the meals she wouldn’t be able to feed me, all the diapers she wouldn’t get to change.

When I was two weeks old, my mother began packing a suitcase. My father said she hesitated before packing the blanket I was brought home from the hospital in.

When I was a month old, my mother placed a knife into my father's hands and kissed him goodbye. She looked me up and down as she prepared to leave, and placed her lavender coloured and scented hand delicately on the side of my face. According to my father, I cooed as she whispered one last, “I love you,” before walking out of our lives. 

When I was a year old, my father filmed me taking my first steps. If you listen closely to the tape, you might be able to hear him crying softly in the background. I’ve never been able to tell if those tears were happy or sad. I swear that I could even hear him whispering, “Krolia, this one’s for you, by you.”

When I was a year and a half old, I said my first word, mama, followed closely a few days later by ‘knife,’ and then finally ‘mama knife,’ while reaching for what she had left behind. My father says that he must have talked about her too much after she first left, and that I must have been carrying some of his hurt for him.

When I was three years old, I scribbled a picture of my family in preschool. Myself, my dad, and a purple blur with black, braided hair. My teacher pulled my father aside at school pick up that day, and asked him if he knew anything about why I would include something like that in a family portrait. He didn’t speak, just shook his head before taking the picture and my hand, leading me to our car. He didn’t even make it out of the parking lot before he broke down. He just sat there, in the driver’s seat, and put his head in his hands on the steering wheel and cried. I sat in my seat and looked at the picture, then at my father. I leaned as far forwards as I could, and patted the center console of the car. “It’s okay, papa. I know she’d love me.” It was all he could do to lift his head and look back at me with a tearful smile. It’s one of my earliest memories.

When I was five years old, my father moved the framed photo of my mother holding a newborn me from his room to mine. He told me that he wanted me to see her more. I held onto him as we both sat there on my bed and stared at the portrait on the wall above us, her face surrounded by an almost angelic glow, made somehow even more ethereal by the tear tracks on her face. She was holding me in her arms sitting in a rocking chair by the crib that once held me. Baby me looked to the camera with an amazed wonderment in my eyes, curious of all I didn’t know, which was altogether too much.

When I was seven years old, I met a friend that had two moms. When they brought her over for a playdate, I looked to my father and said that maybe she could share one, since she had one extra. My father only placed a hand on my shoulder and looked at them sadly, and they looked back with an understanding in their eyes. They hugged their daughter goodbye with just a little more ferocity then they had before.

When I was nine years old, my father got an email from my teacher recommending that I be put in my school’s gifted program. I remember coming home from school and him hugging me and telling me how proud of me he was, and that my mother would be even prouder if she was there. I remember feeling happy that she would have been proud, but sad that she’d never get to see how much I’d grown up.

When I was eleven years old, I was accepted into the top middle school in our district. My father helped me pick out my classes, and pointed me in the direction of engineering and design. He had helped design bridges before he switched over to designing houses, and said that he saw the same spark in me that he saw in himself when he was younger. We both grinned at each other as we filled out the forms. 

When I was thirteen years old was the first time my heart raced and my palms turned sweaty when I was face-to-face with a guy. I ran my teeth over my braces after he hugged me and stayed a little too close for a little too long. The clamour from the referee’s voice, robots being taken for one last spin, students cheering came rushing back to me as he pulled away to celebrate with our other teammates. I stood there dazed with the controller hanging from my hand, smiling with a faraway look in my eyes. My eyes focused as they met my father’s, and he smiled a knowing smile.

When I was fifteen years old my father began teaching me how to drive. I had passed my permit test with clammy hands and chest tight with anxiety. I slammed on the breaks, narrowly avoiding crashing into a light post in the parking lot we were practicing in, put the car in park, and slid down my seat with a sigh. I groaned when my father started talking about being more cautious and thinking through my actions instead of acting on impulse. I looked up at him when he started talking about my mother, though, and how good of driver she was. My father smiled, somewhere far away, as he recounted the times she’d take them on dates. He said she’d used to own a motorcycle, and that she loved terrifying him as she drove probably too far over the speed limit on small, almost deserted country roads. When he was done, he looked at me with a patient smile and I sat up straight and took a deep breath, ready to start again.

When I turned sixteen, my father took me to the DMV to get my license. I smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up with shaky hands. When I came back inside after my road test, he looked at me questioningly and I held up two thumbs up, grinning. He grinned back. Getting my license meant that I could be accepted into the Garrison, a private academy correlated with NASA that was known for training the greats- aerospace engineers, pilots, air traffic controllers, you name it- their top students were practically guaranteed jobs in aerospace, and I couldn’t be more excited. 

When I was sixteen and three months, I shook hands with Professor Iverson after my interview. He showed a practiced smile and told me that he was glad to have me on board. I smiled back and told him that I was looking forward to the following school year. When I walked out of the office to the waiting room where my dad was- I could have driven to the school myself, but he wanted to be there for moral support, which I was just a little more than secretly grateful for- he shrugged his shoulders with an expectant look on his face, and I couldn’t stop the grin that spread across mine as I jogged towards him and he enveloped me in a hug, telling me that mom would be so proud of me.

When I was sixteen and six months, my father handed me the knife my mother had given him when I was only a month old. He put his hand on top of my head and sadly told me that he loved me, and to not forget him when I was gone, and to remember mom when I was angry- thinking of her stories told through my dad always made me feel like I had some sort of greater purpose, or like she was looking down at me and offering a guiding hand. He had to fill out a bunch of forms and have a lot of long, antagonizing phone conversations with school officials, but I was finally ready to carry my mother’s knife around with me- it felt like a little piece of her was with me wherever I went. 

My roommate, Pidge, was a short kid who had gotten his license early for the express purpose of being admitted to the Garrison- he was a tech genius. “The Garrison being closely affiliated with to a government organization helped with the early license thing,” he explained to me with a half smile and a shrug. I grinned and told him that I was looking forward to rooming with him. He grinned back and said that he hoped I liked late, night-before-the-test study sessions. I told him I didn’t know of any other kind. He said that we’d get along just fine.

When was sixteen and nine months, I was getting settled in at the Garrison and still hadn’t come out of the closet to anyone but my father and a few of my close friends. Engineering schools- or nerd schools- weren’t exactly known for being the most accepting to those who didn’t fit a very specific category of nerd. The night I got the courage up to tell Pidge, I was sitting on my bed, hands fidgeting in my lap nervously while he was sitting at his desk. He swiveled around in his chair, a single hand still resting on his homework, as I nervously explained to him that I hadn’t ever had thoughts about girls in the way all my friends explained to me until I was thirteen, and then I’d thought them for a guy. I had drawn my knees up to my chest and was picking at a piece of lint on my sock as I heard the creak of the chair as he got up, then sat next to me on the bed. He put his hand on my shoulder, and when I met his eyes, he looked as nervous as I felt. I began to lean away until he opened his mouth and hesitantly said, “I’m a girl.” 

When I was seventeen, Pidge and I had practically become best friends. I’ll never forget the nights of her complaining to me about her useless crew members- and how Lance, her crew’s pilot, never shut up about how great he was even though all he really wanted was to be a fighter pilot- over our math homework. She told me in a monotone how he had big dreams for such a small amount of intellect. We came to the conclusion that stupidity wasn’t his problem, he just tried to overcompensate a bit too much. Or a lot too much, in Pidge’s opinion. I laughed. When she told me that he’d remarked to her that he was annoyed at how much better I was than him (her words, not mine), I began to notice him in my classes. We decided I should mess with him a little bit. Not much, just a few smirks in his direction whenever I beat his score in the simulator, or when I heard him boasting about his test scores to his friends, I’d make sure he overheard me telling one of my friends my score, which maybe happened to be just a little higher than his. Pidge and I would laugh at how offended his expression was when he heard me, but I stopped laughing when I thought of the way he looked at me when he heard that I’d beat him- the fiercest look of determination to be better than someone I’d ever seen on a person- and my heart jumped. When she noticed the look on my face, Pidge looked at me confusedly, then devilishly smirked as she noticed my rapidly reddening face. That led to me grabbing a pillow off of my bed and smacking her with it, which led to her grabbing one and hitting me back, which ended up with a full-blown pillow war on our hands for the next five minutes. Lance and his face were forgotten until the next test, or the next simulation, or the next time he looked at me, and all was right with the world.

When I was seventeen and a half, I left Pidge and I’s dorm room for what I knew would be the last time. She was the smartest person I knew, and even she couldn’t get me out of the mess I’d found myself in. My old friend, Shiro, had been selected for a mission to Kerberos two and a half years earlier. He’s the person who had inspired me to apply for the Garrison in the first place. When his crew had been found missing, presumed dead a year later, I’d thrown myself into preparations for my Garrison interview and application. Pidge and I had told each other about our connections to the Kerberos disaster, the people we’d lost- family- literally to her and figuratively to me. She’d told me what she thought might have happened, and, late at night, whispered to me that she thought that it may have been aliens. I solemnly nodded, but I struggled with whether or not to tell her about who my mom was- what she may have been- and eventually decided against it. I still agreed with her, though, and went to Iverson’s office to check the tapes in the place where she had left off when she’d been caught. As it turns out, that may not have been the best idea because he’d definitely upped the security since she’d been kicked out of there last. An obvious move, but one we didn’t really think about enough. When the Garrison tried to contact my father so that he could bring me home, they found no answer on the other side of the phone. When they went to our address, they found our house abandoned. They didn’t know what to do, especially not with me, so they decided to let me stay in an old house on school property. It had used to belong to the old groundskeeper, but it had been abandoned for a long time. They left me with a pat on the back, and the tight, sad smiles of those who had witnessed someone going through tragedy but didn’t know what to do, or say. They told me I was welcome to come to the cafeteria to get food, and stay in contact with my old friends. Because they technically didn’t cancel my enrollment, I was free to stay there instead of being turned out on the streets, homeless. It was the most Iverson could do. I was happy enough with my new life- no classes, free food, Pidge coming out to visit on weekends and sneaking out after curfew to work on our theory about what really happened on Kerberos- plus the promise of a sustainable paying job at the Garrison once I was older, as long as I could prove that I could clean up my act.

When I was seventeen and nine months, I decided to break into a government facility.


End file.
